More Petit Le Mans 2009 @ Road Atlanta

chinpokojed · Oct 4, 2009

My brother and I were asked to crew for King Rat Motorsports and their Speed World Challange Lexus IS300 Touring Car. It was a great time, good practice, and we had some pretty amazing access with our crew badges. Here are a few of my favorites so far, and all C&C is welcome (I know i need to work on my pans - argh)!! I love motorsports but feel my inexperience shows through in some of my shots and would appreciate any input.

Everything was shot with a Canon 40D, and mostly a Canon 55-250 f4-5.6, and a few with my Sigma 18-50 f2.8. Processed with Adobe Photoshop CS4.

The #62 King Rat IS300 driven by Alex Ratcliffe

The Tri-Point Motorsports Mazda6 driven by Jason Saini

A SpeedTV HD TV Camera with the Race Leaders on Screen

BMW Rahal Letterman Racing E92 M3

Autocon Motorsports Lola B06/10-AER in Turn 1

A Corvette C6.R LM car being run down by a Oreca 01-AIM LM car, exiting turn 12

Two Acura LM cars heading toward down the front straight.

Robertson Racing Doran Ford GT Mk7

Audi R15 TDI at Turn 1

Panoz Team PTG Panoz Esperante GTLM-Ford in the Pits

Thoughts? Comments?

AtlPikMan · Oct 4, 2009

Looks like i should have gone...Nice pics.

Outrageous · Oct 5, 2009

and i am now jealous cause you got to shoot on a clean day. very sharp photos though, i love the finish line shot!

chinpokojed · Oct 5, 2009

Thanks! Thankfully the weather was great every day up until the 'big' race, which was good because I didn't do any shooting in the rain!!

Other then obviously slowing down my shutter to work on my pans, any tips? Thoughts on my crops? Scathing criticisms?

Outrageous · Oct 5, 2009

I'd say panning, and i'm personally not a fan of the tilted camera, but for the trun 5 shot it works, I'd use it less, and find closer spots or zoom in more sometimes.

TarHeelDan2001 · Oct 5, 2009

I personally like the tilt on the first M3 shot and the LGM Vette, and the Mazda sparks pic is just cool. The curbing is taller than it looks. :mrgreen:

The T1 shots are good too. It's tough to get sharp pictures there because the speeds are so high.

Nice job shooting between the raindrops! I'm a Corvette guy, so more C6R pics next year! :mrgreen:

chinpokojed · Oct 6, 2009

Thanks for the compliments and critiques! it was definitely some of the most challenging shooting i've done, and while not everything is print worthy, I'm pretty satisfied. Especially since it looks like one of my shots is going to be published with an article on SPEEDtv.com!! More details about that coming soon...

Regarding the angled crops, I don't normally crop my stuff like that, but since i didn't have much in the way of tight racing shots I thought it needed something to add some drama. Processed a few more today of some different cars, just to see if I can elicit a little more feedback.

Ferrari 430 GT

Porsche 911 GT3 RSR

Acura ARX-02a (same image, different crops)

Another of the Robertson Racing Ford GT

yay? nay?

chinpokojed · Oct 6, 2009

Almost forgot, if you'd like to see a larger version please visit my Flickr page for this event.

Nihilation · Oct 6, 2009

Good stuff, this was actually my 3rd year going down to Petit. I was fond of the KR IS300, being I used to own an IS300, so I took a few shots of that car while spectating at turn 10. Shooting cars is pretty much all I do. I'll have to share a few of my shots soon.